In the just-released Bill James Gold Mine 2010, Bill James ranks the quality of young talent on each of the thirty major league teams. This is the third year for his newly-developed “Young Talent Inventory.” The Tampa Bay Rays rank #1 in overall young talent (up from #3 this time last year).

“We begin by assigning to every player in major league baseball an “Inventory Value”,” James says, “based on his age and major league performance. We figure two scores for every major league player, an “Established Value Score” and a “Youth Score”, then we put these together into a “Youth/Value Score” or Inventory Value.”

As James notes, “Competitive teams don’t have as much room to let young players thrash around, and consequently most of the top teams don’t show as having a lot of young talent. They may have the young talent; it just isn’t in the lineup yet.” That having been said, here are his rankings of the Young Talent Inventory of all 30 teams (with their rankings last year in parentheses):

Tampa Bay Rays (3)

Colorado Rockies (8)

Minnesota Twins (1)

Arizona Diamondbacks (2)

Boston Red Sox (10)

San Francisco Giants (22)

New York Yankees (29)

Texas Rangers (19)

Chicago White Sox (25)

Florida Marlins (4)

Los Angeles Dodgers (13)

Philadelphia Phillies (20)

Atlanta Braves (9)

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (11)

Kansas City Royals (5)

New York Mets (16)

Chicago Cubs (26)

Seattle Mariners (18)

Milwaukee Brewers (6)

Baltimore Orioles (24)

Oakland A’s (12)

Toronto Blue Jays (28)

Washington Nationals (23)

St. Louis Cardinals (14)

Pittsburgh Pirates (17)

Cleveland Indians (7)

Cincinnati Reds (15)

Detroit Tigers (27)

San Diego Padres (21)

Houston Astros (30)

Going from #29 to #7 in a year is pretty impressive. I’m not sure how much of this is the Yankees cadre of main cogs and how much of this is players outside of that – like Hughes, Joba, Gardner, Roberston, etc. But, credit has to go to Brian Cashman for making the Yankees younger in some respects.

I’m not sure how much of this is the Yankees cadre of main cogs and how much of this is players outside of that – like Hughes, Joba, Gardner, Roberston, etc.

Well two of the main cogs and the backup catcher (Damon/36, Matsui/35. Molina/34) have been replaced with younger guys (Granderson/29, Johnson/31, Cervelli/24). Those three rosters moves alone have made the team a combined 21 years younger.

Cano is surely a big part of this. Lots of value from a relatively young guy. For some reason he’s often forgotten about when we talk about player development and youth because he’s been around since 2005.

I seem to recall a thread last year where you cited a post from another cite which called into question whether or not the Yankees were getting any younger (especially the pitching). My main reply was that I didn’t see any case for the argument that the Yanks had not gotten significantly younger in the pitching staff.